Live On Maxwell Street [Live]

Producer Norman Dayron (who also worked with Mike Bloomfield, among others) recorded "Live on Maxwell Street" on the corner of Peoria and 14th Street in Chicago, Illinois, on September 24th 1964.
Nighthawk is backed by just drums and a rhythm guitar on most of the tracks, although on three or four of them, harpist Carey Bell lends a hand.
The sound is surprisingly good, considering the circumstances (you can sometimes hear people talking, applauding and yelling in the background, and even a car driving by!), and the songs are simply excellent. Nighthawk does a raw, powerful cover of Big Joe Turner's "Honey Hush", a slow, menacing "Cheating And Lying Blues", a mournful "I Need Your Love So Bad", and a terrific medley of "Anna Lee" and "Sweet Black Angel" which will make you look quite silly as you move your upper body back and forth to the rhythm!

Nighthawk's amplified slide guitar playing is every bit as powerful as anything ever recorded by Muddy Waters or slide specialist Earl Hooker, and since he usually played in standart tuning (an unusual choice), he was able to suddenly crank out a fiery, twelve-bar single-string solo (evident on "The Time Have Come", which should be a blueprint for everyone who wishes to play electric blues).

On the CD reissue of this album, four bonus cuts and an interview segment with Nighthawk is added. One of the bonus tracks is an exuberant live version of "Mama Talk To Your Daughter", the J.B. Lenoir classic, and even though it's really impossible to be sure, the credits list Lenoir himself as the singer.

Robert Nighthawk has never achieved the blues icon status of his Chicago contemporaries Waters, Earl Hooker and Elmore James, partly because of his seeming lack of interest in recording, but he was one of the first to effortlessly bridge the gap between country blues and urban blues, and he should be recognized as one of the true greats of the Chicago blues scene.

This album is one of the essentials of any collection of electric Chicago blues (along with "Muddy Waters at Newport", "Down And Out Blues" by Sonny Boy Williamson II, Howlin' Wolf's first two LPs, and pretty much anything by Elmore James!).

The music is very fine, indeed, but, in my opinion, this is the least attractive presentation of it currently available. Everything on this disc is on the legitimately produced 3-CD "And This Is Maxwell Street" set (from Rooster Blues Records), and the sound seems better on that set too. The multiple CD "And This Is Maxwell Street" set includes many tracks not included here and even has a third bonus disc with Michael Bloomfield's complete 44-minute interview of Nighthawk made in 1964 as part of the documentary project that led to the creation of Mike Shea's film "And This Is Free," the ultimate source of this music. "And This Is Maxwell Street" also includes snippets of band chatter between numbers, street noise, preachers preaching, car horns--the atmosphere of the openair market where the music was recorded. The producers have succeeded in making you feel like you are there on Maxwell Street on a summer Sunday in 1964. All the mood is lost in the edited tracks that appear on the disc reviewed here.

The disc reviewed here is presented in an unattractive package. The liner notes are the same as those used when the music was first released many years ago (and, I suspect, re-used without their author's knowledge), completely ignoring the vast amount of new information about these recordings that has come to light and repeating attributions that were suspect long ago. In contrast, the 60-page booklet that accompanies "And This Is Maxwell Street" is lavishly illustrated and highly informative and makes a notable effort to be honest about uncertain attributions. It is in itself almost worth the price of the discs. Perhaps most notable among the mistaken attributions on the disc reviewed here is the attribution of "Mama, Talk To Your Daughter" as being performed by J.B. Lenoir.

The title of this disc claims that these tracks have been remastered, but it sounds identical to the old one to me. At least one record store manager has said to me he thinks even the LP sounded better than this.

In short, I see no reason to bother with this disc. Go straight to "And This Is Maxwell Street."